World of Warcraft (PC)

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Introduction

Not the actual bat but still an attacking bat

Hello and welcome to the World of Warcraft, well, the European Beta. Throughout my time with the game, I will be writing regular diary like reports on what I have been up to, giving my impressions on the game and how the world is changing. I've just logged a day's play with the game and I thought I'd share my initial findings with you, the loyal readers of Pro-G.

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After installing (and logging on, etc) you find yourself in the character creation screen. Pick from any of eight races, male or female. These eight are divided into two factions, good and bad, as per usual, and seeing as I always choose evil, I thought I'd go with evil yet again. An undead troop from the horde. As is the case with most RPG's, you can then choose your class: warrior, rogue, churchy fellow, mage and warlock. It's slightly different for all races, but I expect it's essentially the same.You can also alter your hair, face, colours of things and other little details. It has all the usual fare that you'll have come to expect. So anyway, Undead Warlock for me then and into the game I jumped.

Starting off within a large tomb, I gave myself a few minutes to get to terms with the game. WASD keyboard movement is common in a large proportion of PC games, so that was fine, but there is a huge interface to be dealt with through the mouse. If it wasn't for the frequently appearing tips, you would quickly find yourself pretty confused by the huge number of icons.

So venturing outside, and after a quick chat with the grave keeper, I launched an assault on the nearest thing I could find, which happened to be a bat. Now, combat is slightly daunting at first, but it goes something like this:

1. Click something with the mouse.
2. Right Click it to attack.

Simple, I suppose, but it feels a bit cumbersome at first. Also, the game doesn't tell you, that if you're a Warlock, you shouldn't run headlong into Melee combat, and that you should use your spells. Hey, I could have sussed that for myself really, if I'd actually realised that those icons on the bottom of the screen were my spells. And so, I managed to overpower a bat: just. Nice.

It's easy to get lost in the World of Warcraft. It's such a large place and a lot of the roaming hills do look the same. The way Blizzard has dealt with this is by giving you plenty of tasks to do in the same town/village area. This works excellently, and after only about 5 hours I know the first village like the back of my hand. Of course, now I'm wandering around in the other villages and towns, I'm getting lost frequently.

Buying and selling: A key way to make money

Exploration seems to have a simple rule. If you see an enemy that's at a higher level than you, you ought to back track. I expect it's so that n00bs like me won't try and mix it up with high level demons and such and you'll actually get to know certain areas through re-exploration. Hell it works quite well; I know I'm not going back to the mill in a hurry.

It would appear that the general population of WoW are very skilled indeed. You can hold down two trades as well as your basic, warrior - warlock troop type. You can do this by agreeing to become certain tradesmen's apprentices. This allows you to do things like turn herbs to medicine, create your own armour and clothing, and all sorts of other things. I foresaw myself taking a lot of damage and so my current trade - the other remaining unfilled - is a medic. I can currently make my own bandages from cloth, healing other adventurers and myself in a pinch.

And that's all I've really done so far. Obviously I've done quests and levelled up (to level 8 I might add) but I've not really done anything that interesting so far. Most of the quests have been kill amount Y of set X. Or find X amount of Y. I'm sure there are better quests just around the corner, but as it is, WoW certainly seems interesting, hopefully, with a lot more to offer.

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